Who piloted Trieste with Don Walsh at Challenger Deep?

Jacques Piccard piloted Trieste with Don Walsh at Challenger Deep. Piccard was the Swiss oceanographer and bathyscaphe designer who shared the historic descent with the U.S. Navy officer on 23 January 1960.

Piccard had inherited a fascination with extreme-depth exploration from his father, Auguste Piccard, the inventor and pioneering pilot of high-altitude balloons and an early bathyscaphe. Jacques developed and demonstrated deep-diving technology, and the U.S. Navy later acquired Trieste and extensively modified it for Project Nekton.

During the descent, the pressure-resistant steel sphere protected the two men from the enormous pressure outside. One of Trieste’s outer window panes cracked after the vessel passed 9,000 metres, but the craft continued safely. The other names in the options belong to different eras or roles: Victor Vescovo and James Cameron made later Challenger Deep descents, while Auguste Piccard was Jacques’s father, not his companion on this dive.